I write of this
now older than my mother
as if it were only she then
who felt
such sorrow.

***********************A revision of a draft poem posted last year for a prompt by Izy Gruye on Real Toads, that I revised thinking of Easter and the current real toads prompt (from Shay) about a crack, a fissure. The picture is in fact of a coat of my mother’s.

Frost chicken-scratches
the drive;
flakes feathering stems into found
pipe cleaners, only ceci
n’est pas
une pipe–not in this sea
of spring
where peeps hardly sound,
the downed stars at our feet
as silent as
the wind, only shushing this morning
a mist that does not emanate
from what is not an ember
at hill’s horizon,
lighting what feels
as if it’s never
been seen before: this, that is,
this, that is not–

*************************

poem for Real Toads Play It Again Sam, hosted by the wonderful photographer and poet, Margaret Bednar. In my case, I specifically use a returning prompt by Mary Kling asking one to write of the ordinary. Frost in the morning? It’s so beautiful that it is hard to know if it qualifies!

Oh you stretched
for the sinuous (that double-dutchness
of slant loop)–oh you thread
of my tale, you tail
of my thread,
you path
to be read,
you orderly gift to gab, you dignifier
of what sounds stupid solely said–

Oh you road through blinking
deserts, you remembrancer
of sky–

************************

A very draftish poem, meaning just now written, for Real Toads Open Platform. As one may infer from my little (recycled) drawing, this (like my previous poem, Ode to our Feet) is somewhat influenced by Pablo Neruda’s Ode to my Socks.

Your feet are like slabs of dough
that could be kneaded, folded even in two,
and still would rise back with a little time,
into something between
ciabatta and submarines

that seek mine,
which are like caged birds
with cloths draped over
to get them to sleep–I speak of the socks I must wear
and not our sheets–
and speak of birds not so much
because my feet sing–except sometimes when nosed
by icy submarines–
but of how they twitter inside,
electrically, their too-many bones hooked
to those wires, my feet
being caged,
of how they need a wing to hide their heads,
being also birds,
and of how, being finally feet,
they are wingless,

and I speak too
of how you roll down the socks
and simply hold them
sometimes in the span
of mittening hands,
sometimes in some nest
of rib, some cove
of torso,
knitting a warmth
that wool just can’t
provide, purling from even these
splintered planks, a pooled
opalescence;

and too I speak
of how my poor bony birds feed
on that uncrumbed warmth
cast so sweetly
on these dry waters–

*****************************

Here’s another drafty poem for my prompt on Real Toads, to write something “under an influence.” In this case, the influence was Pablo Neruda’s Ode to My Socks, which particularly appeals to this big sock lover.

The pic is of some Christmas cookies made by one of my daughters (or friend) some time ago, and below is one of the pics from the prompt that is a watercolor of mine (that has some fit for the Neruda poem, where he describes his feet as fish.)

I walked out to a corporate wood
because a fire was in my head
and cut my gathers from my skirts
and lined their darks with pin-stripe thread,
and when white moths were on the wing–
by that I mean some flits of art–
bad enough to be a she–
and not, as well, an odd man out–

But soon I lay me on the floor,
the fire blown to full-haired flame
by need’s hot rustle with what-for
as other needs called out my name,
and what had seemed a glimmering girl,
if not with apple-blossomed hair
(nor cherry lips nor beauty fair),
called herself my name and ran
and faded through the track-lit air

Though I’ve grown old with wandering
through dollared lands and billing lands,
I will find out where I have gone,
take back my lips, take back my hands,
and browse among long dog-eared tomes
and write my own and write my own
beneath a moon as bright as bone
beneath a sun as white as bone.

*******************************

This is very much a draft poem for my own prompt on Real Toads to take inspiration from another poem. I really did not mean those doing the prompt to be so imitative, though mine is –my source poem The Song of the Wandering Aengus by Yeats. (I’d like to have made it more lyrical, but well, this is what came out.) The painting is mine. All rights reserved.

The horizon a cut-out
of crest fallen sky,
geese honk
flying by, horns caught
in some rush hour
towards spring,
as smallish birds that don’t yet sing
buzz imitations of tree frog, bug,
define overhead wires in this grey hour
with ciphers of what’s just
gone West
(and its caress)—
I know one’s days are numbered,
but please not
the evenings.